The Ohio Pregnancy Assessment System is representative of women who gave birth in Ohio. Sampled women are contacted approximately 2-4 months after delivery and can participate by completing a mailed survey, online survey, or telephone survey. Specific populations of interest, such as the nine Ohio Health Equity Institute (OEI) counties, are oversampled to facilitate analysis of Ohio’s initiatives and ongoing program development.

What is OPAS?

Since 1999, Ohio has been collecting data to examine maternal behaviors and experiences before, during and after a woman’s pregnancy, and during the early infancy of her child. Through 2015, the data were collected through the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), a joint project between the Ohio Department of Health (ODH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Beginning in 2016, ODH began administering the survey independent of CDC. The survey was renamed the Ohio Pregnancy Assessment Survey (OPAS). Like PRAMS, the OPAS data provide information not available from other sources about pre-pregnancy, pregnancy and the first few months after birth.

For information related to the Ohio Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System click here.

2. To monitor changes to specific key indicators of maternal and infant health in areas such as prenatal care, substance use, breastfeeding, safe sleep for infants, violence, and nutrition.

3. To enable a population-based profile of mothers with a live birth.

4. To translate results from analyses into information for planning and evaluating public health programs and policy.

5. To build the capacity of states to collect, analyze, and translate data to address relevant public health issues.

6. To enable comparisons between states relating to maternal and infant health statuses.

How does OPAS operate?

OPAS is representative of women who gave birth in Ohio. Sampled women are contacted approximately 2-4 months after delivery and can participate by completing a mailed survey, online survey, or telephone survey. Specific populations of interest, such as the nine Ohio Health Equity Institute (OEI) counties, are oversampled to facilitate analysis of Ohio’s initiatives and ongoing program development.

How can data from OPAS be used?

This information can be used to identify groups of women and infants at high risk for health problems, to monitor changes in health status, and to measure progress towards goals in improving the health of mothers and infants. Additionally, OPAS provides data to measure progress in Ohio’s maternal and infant health initiatives and is used by researchers to investigate emerging issues in the field of reproductive health.